take heed, take heed of the western wind

Six years ago (six?!) I moved to a place that I lived in for only about half a year and yet it, and the people I met there, dug their way into my heart and made this incredible shift in my life. One of those people, who I met almost exactly six years ago when he drove up from Texas to Wyoming, got married this weekend and I feel so lucky to have him and now his amazing, beautiful wife (who has the best taste in music!) in my life. There are few people I feel completely at home with, but he is one of them and to see him happier than I ever really means the world to me.

Throughout the weekend, I thought so much about the three of us, K, A and I, and all that we did – the hikes and drives around lakes and running into freezing, nearly heart-stoppingly cold water, and how many hours we would spend on rocks warm from the sun talking about the future. Now, the three of us are married, one of us has two insanely adorable children, and all of us seemed to have, somehow, navigated this life so that it not only makes sense, but makes us happy.

So, here’s to friendship and how it makes everything in this super confusing world make a little more sense.

forgetting, and so on

"Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow." -T.S. Eliot

I fall into familiarity so easily when I come back to Pennsylvania, driving with ease past what was once Sweet Daddy's, where I nursed broken hearts in sixth grade, past the Gryphon Cafe, where I I would write and write and write and down overrated biscotti while Louis Armstrong and Ella played in the background, to Valley Forge, where I spent a countless number of sleepless nights wondering what exactly I was doing with my life. And then the sun would rise, there in Valley Forge National Park, and dandelions would tickle my nose and everything smelled like freshly picked apples and caramel and I would watch the world erupt into life.

People ask why I want to leave the east coast when everything here is so beautiful and easy. When my family is here and so many friends and my childhood. And that is exactly why - it knocks the wind out of me, the constant remembering. I drive by the playground where I grew up pitching in softball games and drinking beer in high school, with most of that time spent with someone who is no longer here and never will be and I still, years and years after her death, can't wrap my mind around that. My heart has been broken and put back together one too many times here and I worry sometime, late late at night when the last of the fireflies have died and it's so cold that it hurts to breathe, that my heart will finally just give in.

things I have forgotten to tell you

I never hated high school the way others did. Nor did I think it was the greatest. Most of my days I waded in a shallow pool of happiness - I did well in school, had good friends, and boyfriends that were more friends than any kind of combustible love affair that left me either breathless or in ruins. Most of high school I treated as a time to get through, to put up with until real life started, when I would feel things more strongly and life would be more than surface level.

So going to my 10 year reunion this weekend was an extension of that status quo I felt growing up. It was vaguely nice seeing people -though the people I really wanted to see I've already kept in touch with. I had one really good conversation with a girl who I haven't kept in touch with, who I spent many an afternoon with writing letters as part of the high school's Amnesty International club, who has a chicken farm and who asked me for advice on how to deal with a mother who just found out she has cancer. Other than that, I enjoyed the whiskey more than the conversation.

Really, what last night proved to me was that I think I made the most out of my time at a high school in the conservative suburbs and was right to always want to, and to finally, leave there. And it's nice to return every 10 years, to see the people whose faces used to populate your every day, and say I'm happy to see you're doing well. That you have pretty children, fun stories about yoga in L.A., are practicing environmental law in D.C. And then I'm happy to leave and return to a world where I feel more free and everything is scarier and more poignant and I cry and laugh with equal enthusiasm. Where when I say I have loved Morocco and Wyoming more than anywhere else, or I want to live in Alaska, people do not ask why.

no one, not even the rain, has such small hands

i live under blankets these days, hibernating with tea and pumpkin pie and candles are everywhere and i can't stop writing love letters to autumn and everything smells like cloves and the light is always beautifully waning. changes in seasons of course make me remember all the times i've danced in leaf piles, mashing bits of yellow leaves into my hair, giving my hands permanent grass stains. six years ago emile said i love you for the first time just after i jumped into a leaf pile and spun and spun until i ran into him and it was so late at night and i was leaving for wyoming in a matter of days and everything was so happy and so sad and there was such finality in that beginning. thanksgiving, six years ago, i thought i was saying goodbye to the person who i thought was going to be my biggest loss. there was my first thanksgiving in college, when we all stayed in wisconsin, these new friends who became my family, and stuffed ourselves silly with tofurkey and drank wisconsin beer until we fell asleep on old corduroy couches that always smelled faintly of nagchampa and oranges and i forgot i was trying to patch up a relationship i had sabotaged. i remember so well waking up that next morning and eating leftover pie and taking a walk by the river and my roommate telling me, "let's write all about last night and put that paper somewhere safe so we'll never forget anything." there have been thanksgivings with our families for the first time and so much wine and laughing and remembering that as much as we fumble, as many mistakes as we make, as hard as we fall and as much as we bleed, there are times that we can say, as the last of the leaves fall and the trees become their old and crotchety selves, these are the people i love.

good night, good night, wherever you are sleeping

It's easy to get distracted here. There's the arm-length tall hefeweizens at bars in the village, tiny bookstores with cold green floors and an employee that looks like Harriet the Spy (as an adult, that is), the glorious cold that came rushing in today, sending the neighborhood kittens into the half-burnt church. There are poetry readings and work of course and coffee with friends from another lifetime, when I was someone who never thought they'd return to the U.S., that they'd always live by the sea in Morocco. In red shoes, eating peppermint patties and drinking hot cider, I find myself wishing for some omniscient narrator who can tell me as nice (and as vague as that word entails) as life is right now, it will get better. That I'll wake up exactly where I want to be, which is somewhere far from the easy grit of this city. Where I can be completely alone, watching the stars' old light on some spot on the horizon, once again an unknown entity to all.

I'm writing you now just to see if you're better

The chill in the air has settled in, finally, and songs about leaves waft from doorways, ours included. A man with a tambourine groans as he sits and stays put at the bottom of the subway stairs. People look to see if there's a place to give him money, but seeing none, they move on, brushing raindrops from bulky gray sweatshirts. And the man shakes his tambourine and the woman selling water ice doesn't show up to the station anymore and I'm drinking tea from red tin containers and football (football football, not soccer) is played in Irish bars. It's autumn in New York.
Has it really been two years since I first moved here, since I would get lost on the subway and end up somewhere where a man from Ghana would give me free chips and tell me how my wallet looked like it was from his country, which he misses but will probably never see again.
Our apartment is cold, which gives me ample opportunity to light as many candles as I want, and the light bounces off his brown sweater and my red dress and, after reverberating off ceiling corners, it zeroes in on us again, making us seem almost ageless, and in this moment, I am happy. Happy fall, friends.

Ray LaMontagne

I've been to hell and back so many times I must admit you kinda bore me